Hillbrow, Johannesburg

After decades of civil unrest and the eventual loosening of barbaric apartheid restrictions, poor South Africans began flooding into inner Johannesburg in search of a better life.

Unfortunately, due to poor planning, a lack of government investment and myriad problems with cultural integration, this rapid increase in urban population led to a city divided – affluent pockets of the global superrich living next to modern day slum neighbourhoods with an overwhelmingly black populous, overrun with crime and poverty.

Hillbrow is one of these neighbourhoods.

In this series, Panos Pictures photographer Nyani Quarmyne shows us a glimpse of life in Hillbrow. His images tell a story of both hope and despair, looking at the district’s ever-present backdrop of crime and poverty, while focusing on George Khosi’s boxing gym; one man’s attempt to bring discipline and aspiration to the youth of his neighbourhood.

Johannesburg

DSC-RX1R (F Stop: 5.6, Shutter: 1/1250, ISO: 500)

George Khosi training a woman during a corporate boxing day at the Hillbrow Boxing Club. The club relies on a small number of private and corporate clients to pay the club's bills, as much of the work Khosi does is for free
Hillbrow, in downtown Johannesburg, is the city's most notorious neighbourhood. It is overcrowded, ridden with illegal squats and suffers from high levels of crime, much of which is related the thriving illicit drug trade.
Against this backdrop, George Khosi's story is not atypical. A childhood spent on the streets, where he survived by committing petty crime and hustling, led to imprisonment at the age of 16. Because he was big and looked older than his age this incarceration was in an adult institution. Here he began to fight, since, as he says “they wanted to make me a woman and I didn't want to be a woman”. When he got out, he took up boxing in earnest. His prospects as a professional boxer looked bright until he was shot and left for dead during a burglary. He lost his right eye and now walks with a limp. His boxing career seemed over but George picked up his gloves again, this time to teach Hillbrow's youngsters. His gym became a place of hope and discipline for local youth, keeping them off the streets and even producing some national champions.

Johannesburg

DSC-RX1R (F Stop: 2.8, Shutter: 1/60, ISO: 2500)

An old photograph of George Khosi, founder of the Hillbrow Boxing Club, annotated with his boxing record.
Hillbrow, in downtown Johannesburg, is the city's most notorious neighbourhood. It is overcrowded, ridden with illegal squats and suffers from high levels of crime, much of which is related the thriving illicit drug trade.
Against this backdrop, George Khosi's story is not atypical. A childhood spent on the streets, where he survived by committing petty crime and hustling, led to imprisonment at the age of 16. Because he was big and looked older than his age this incarceration was in an adult institution. Here he began to fight, since, as he says “they wanted to make me a woman and I didn't want to be a woman”. When he got out, he took up boxing in earnest. His prospects as a professional boxer looked bright until he was shot and left for dead during a burglary. He lost his right eye and now walks with a limp. His boxing career seemed over but George picked up his gloves again, this time to teach Hillbrow's youngsters. His gym became a place of hope and discipline for local youth, keeping them off the streets and even producing some national champions.

Johannesburg

DSC-RX1R (F Stop: 2.0, Shutter: 1/800, ISO: 160)

Yomi Shokunbi, a Nigerian living in South Africa, training at George Khosi's Hillbrow Boxing Club. Currently a model and fitness trainer, Yomi hopes to qualify for his boxing license in a few weeks time and become a professional heavyweight boxer.
Hillbrow, in downtown Johannesburg, is the city's most notorious neighbourhood. It is overcrowded, ridden with illegal squats and suffers from high levels of crime, much of which is related the thriving illicit drug trade.
Against this backdrop, George Khosi's story is not atypical. A childhood spent on the streets, where he survived by committing petty crime and hustling, led to imprisonment at the age of 16. Because he was big and looked older than his age this incarceration was in an adult institution. Here he began to fight, since, as he says “they wanted to make me a woman and I didn't want to be a woman”. When he got out, he took up boxing in earnest. His prospects as a professional boxer looked bright until he was shot and left for dead during a burglary. He lost his right eye and now walks with a limp. His boxing career seemed over but George picked up his gloves again, this time to teach Hillbrow's youngsters. His gym became a place of hope and discipline for local youth, keeping them off the streets and even producing some national champions.

Johannesburg

DSC-RX1R (F Stop: 2.0, Shutter: 1/320, ISO: 800)

Julie Tshabalala, South African Women's welterweight and middleweight champion, won her first championship while under the tutelage of George Khosi at the Hillbrow Boxing Club. She says that promoters tend to focus on men's boxing, and that it's harder for women to find sponsors.
Hillbrow, in downtown Johannesburg, is the city's most notorious neighbourhood. It is overcrowded, ridden with illegal squats and suffers from high levels of crime, much of which is related the thriving illicit drug trade.
Against this backdrop, George Khosi's story is not atypical. A childhood spent on the streets, where he survived by committing petty crime and hustling, led to imprisonment at the age of 16. Because he was big and looked older than his age this incarceration was in an adult institution. Here he began to fight, since, as he says “they wanted to make me a woman and I didn't want to be a woman”. When he got out, he took up boxing in earnest. His prospects as a professional boxer looked bright until he was shot and left for dead during a burglary. He lost his right eye and now walks with a limp. His boxing career seemed over but George picked up his gloves again, this time to teach Hillbrow's youngsters. His gym became a place of hope and discipline for local youth, keeping them off the streets and even producing some national champions.

Johannesburg

DSC-RX1R (F Stop: 2.0, Shutter: 1/400, ISO: 2000)

Aspiring professional boxer Phana Khumalo (24) smiles, despite his bloodied nose, after a sparring session at the Hillbrow Boxing Club.
Hillbrow, in downtown Johannesburg, is the city's most notorious neighbourhood. It is overcrowded, ridden with illegal squats and suffers from high levels of crime, much of which is related the thriving illicit drug trade.
Against this backdrop, George Khosi's story is not atypical. A childhood spent on the streets, where he survived by committing petty crime and hustling, led to imprisonment at the age of 16. Because he was big and looked older than his age this incarceration was in an adult institution. Here he began to fight, since, as he says “they wanted to make me a woman and I didn't want to be a woman”. When he got out, he took up boxing in earnest. His prospects as a professional boxer looked bright until he was shot and left for dead during a burglary. He lost his right eye and now walks with a limp. His boxing career seemed over but George picked up his gloves again, this time to teach Hillbrow's youngsters. His gym became a place of hope and discipline for local youth, keeping them off the streets and even producing some national champions.

Johannesburg

DSC-RX1R (F Stop: 2.0, Shutter: 1/320, ISO: 100)

Natalie Baniea trains a young boy during an afternoon session at the George Khosi's Hillbrow Boxing Club. As the club does not have the resources to provide child-size equipment, the youngsters make do with adult gloves.
Hillbrow, in downtown Johannesburg, is the city's most notorious neighbourhood. It is overcrowded, ridden with illegal squats and suffers from high levels of crime, much of which is related the thriving illicit drug trade.
Against this backdrop, George Khosi's story is not atypical. A childhood spent on the streets, where he survived by committing petty crime and hustling, led to imprisonment at the age of 16. Because he was big and looked older than his age this incarceration was in an adult institution. Here he began to fight, since, as he says “they wanted to make me a woman and I didn't want to be a woman”. When he got out, he took up boxing in earnest. His prospects as a professional boxer looked bright until he was shot and left for dead during a burglary. He lost his right eye and now walks with a limp. His boxing career seemed over but George picked up his gloves again, this time to teach Hillbrow's youngsters. His gym became a place of hope and discipline for local youth, keeping them off the streets and even producing some national champions.

Johannesburg

DSC-RX1R (F Stop: 2.8, Shutter: 1/320, ISO: 800)

Siyakudumisa Vapi (right), a licensed boxer hoping to make it as a professional, sparring at the Hillbrow Boxing Club.
Vapi is training for a fight against the third-ranked fighter in the national featherweight division; if he wins it will bring him closer to his objective of challenging for the national title, and being able to make a decent living from boxing. Vapi says boxing pulled him away from the streets and bad company, and gave him discipline.
Hillbrow, in downtown Johannesburg, is the city's most notorious neighbourhood. It is overcrowded, ridden with illegal squats and suffers from high levels of crime, much of which is related the thriving illicit drug trade.
The gym has become a place of hope and discipline for local youth, keeping them of the streets and even producing some national champions.

Johannesburg

DSC-RX1R (F Stop: 3.5, Shutter: 1/25, ISO: 6400)

The ring at George Khosi's Hillbrow Boxing Club.
Hillbrow, in downtown Johannesburg, is the city's most notorious neighbourhood. It is overcrowded, ridden with illegal squats and suffers from high levels of crime, much of which is related the thriving illicit drug trade.
Against this backdrop, George Khosi's story is not atypical. A childhood spent on the streets, where he survived by committing petty crime and hustling, led to imprisonment at the age of 16. Because he was big and looked older than his age this incarceration was in an adult institution. Here he began to fight, since, as he says “they wanted to make me a woman and I didn't want to be a woman”. When he got out, he took up boxing in earnest. His prospects as a professional boxer looked bright until he was shot and left for dead during a burglary. He lost his right eye and now walks with a limp. His boxing career seemed over but George picked up his gloves again, this time to teach Hillbrow's youngsters. His gym became a place of hope and discipline for local youth, keeping them off the streets and even producing some national champions.

Johannesburg

DSC-RX1R (F Stop: 3.5, Shutter: 1/25, ISO: 6400)

Siyakudumisa Vapi, a licensed boxer hoping to make it as a professional, makes his way past a low overhang in the basement of the Hillbrow Boxing Club. He shares the basement with a number of young boxing hopefuls and down-on-their-luck former professionals, all living in curtained-off spaces.
Between jobs, Vapi divides his time between seeking employment as a carpenter, and training for a fight against the third-ranked fighter in the national featherweight division; if he wins it will bring him closer to his objective of challenging for the national title, and being able to make a decent living from boxing. Vapi believes boxing pulled him away from the streets and bad company, and gave him discipline.
The Hillbrow Boxing club is run by George Khosi, who founded the club after gunshot injuries put an end to his own boxing career. The club operates in a donated space on the forecourt of a disused petrol station in Hillbrow, one of Johannesburg's most notorious neighbourhoods.

Johannesburg

DSC-RX1R (F Stop: 2.0, Shutter: 1/80, ISO: 4000)

Siyakudumisa Vapi's boxing boots and pairs of child-sized boxing gloves hang next to a painting on the wall in his room. Currently living in a curtained-off space in the basement of the Hillbrow Boxing Club, he is training for a fight against the third-ranked fighter in the national featherweight division.
If he wins, it will bring him closer to his objective of challenging for the national title and being able to make a decent living from boxing.
Hillbrow, in downtown Johannesburg, is the city's most notorious neighbourhood. It is overcrowded, ridden with illegal squats and suffers from high levels of crime, much of which is related the thriving illicit drug trade.
The gym has become a place of hope and discipline for local youth, keeping them of the streets and even producing some national champions.

Johannesburg

DSC-RX1R (F Stop: 2.0, Shutter: 1/500, ISO: 100)

The circular Ponte City tower is an icon of the Johannesburg skyline. For many years it symbolised the inner city's decline as it was overrun by gangs and crime.
Now, with investment coming back in, and middle class and wealthy families moving into the buiding, it also symbolises hope for the inner city's renewal.

Johannesburg

DSC-RX1R (F Stop: 2.0, Shutter: 1/500, ISO: 100)

Sfiso, a drug user, injects himself with a used syringe of 'nyaope' on a street in Hillbrow, an inner-city neighbourhood with a reputation as a centre for illicit drug use.
'Nyaope' is usually described as a crude form of heroin cut with anything from anti-retrovirals to rat poison or pool cleaner. It is cheap and addictive, costing only about 20 Rand (1.68 USD) per hit.

Johannesburg

DSC-RX1R (F Stop: 2.0, Shutter: 1/80, ISO: 160)

Simo on his way up to the roof of a 'hijacked building' (slang describing an illegally occupied squat), where he lives in in Hillbrow, Johannesburg.
The building has neither electricity nor running water, and refuse is piled up outside the walls. Simo says he has been living here for 16 years.
Hillbrow, in downtown Johannesburg, is the city's most notorious neighbourhood. It is overcrowded, ridden with illegal squats and suffers from high levels of crime, much of which is related the thriving illicit drug trade.

Johannesburg

DSC-RX1R (F Stop: 5.6, Shutter: 1/640, ISO: 100)

A fire-damaged ‘hijacked building' (slang describing an illegally occupied squat) in downtown Johannesburg.
After a steep decline in the 1990’s, the inner Johannesburg is now a peculiar mix of interspersed working class, down-and-out and gentrified realities, all within a few minutes walk of each other.

Johannesburg

DSC-RX1R (F Stop: 2.0, Shutter: 1/1600, ISO: 100)

Children play with old car tyres on a quiet street in Hillbrow, an inner-city neighbourhood with a reputation for drugs, violence and crime.
The children fill the tyres with gravel and sand, which makes a noise and produces 'engine smoke' as the children roll them along the streets.

Johannesburg

DSC-RX1R (F Stop: 11, Shutter: 1/125, ISO: 800)

Hillbrow, in downtown Johannesburg, is the city's most notorious neighbourhood.
It is overcrowded, ridden with illegal squats and suffers from high levels of crime, much of which is related to the thriving illicit drug trade.
During the Apartheid era, Hillbrow was populated exclusively by white, middle-class residents. After the advent of majority rule in South Africa, Hillbrow’s population grew hugely due to foreign and rural migrants coming in to the city in search of a better life.
This influx of people caused Hillbrow’s wealthier residents to leave the district. The new, poorer Hillbrow population continues to suffer with high rates of unemployment.

Nyani Quarmyne, April 2015

“Hillbrow, located in Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city, is the inner-city’s most notorious neighbourhood.

During the apartheid era it was the exclusive domain of wealthy white South Africans. Then, during the unrest of the 1980s, black South Africans began to move into the area in defiance of the Group Areas Act, which decreed who could be where according to the colour of their skin. The whites moved out, taking their money with them, and the area began a steady decline. After the advent of majority rule, poor black South Africans flooded into the inner city seeking a better life, and in the 1990’s Hillbrow hit an apex of crime and violence.

Today, Hillbrow remains characterised by inbound economic migration, grinding poverty, over-crowding, illegally occupied squats, hard drugs and crime. Towers like ‘Highrise’ still offer magnificent city vistas, but to reach them one must enter in the knowledge that the building is the chosen home of the drug dealers who operate with impunity in the park below. You will have to trudge up endless flights of stairs - the elevators are permanently broken - and traverse garbage-strewn hallways to look out at the view. Long-term residents say Hillbrow is not as bad as it once was. But they still don’t walk the streets at night.

Against the backdrop of this history, George Khosi recounts his own story: a childhood spent on the streets. Petty crime, hustling, stealing to eat. Constantly in and out of trouble with the law. And then at 16, being big for his age, he wound up in an adult prison. It was here that he began to fight in earnest because, as he put it, “they wanted to make me a woman, and I didn’t want to be woman.” When he got out of prison he took up boxing.

Khosi had a burgeoning professional career ahead of him, but then was shot and left for dead in a home invasion that robbed him of the vision in his right eye, left him with a limp, and put an end to any dreams of becoming a world champion. Eventually, he decided to pick up the gloves again, this time to teach Hillbrow youngsters to box—to give them hope, discipline, and an activity to keep them off the streets. He brought up a couple national champions in the process.

Khosi operates on a shoestring, doing much of what he does for free, with battered equipment and a makeshift ring in the donated space of the forecourt of a disused petrol station: The Hillbrow Boxing Club.”

About Nyani Quarmyne

As soon as Nyani discovered photography he quickly abandoned his former career to become a full time photographer.

He refers to himself as a 'hybridized African' having been born in India to a Ghanaian father and Filipino mother and having lived in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Canada, Australia, the USA and Ghana, in addition to exploring the long list of countries where his work and his travels have taken him.

As a self-taught photographer, Nyani has established an impressive professional career in the medium. He is a member of Panos Pictures and has worked for numerous high-profile international clients including the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), UNICEF, Save the Children, The Guardian, Médecins Sans Frontières and many more.

Nyani joins Sony’s Global Imaging Ambassadors program with a #FutureofCities story from Hillbrow, Johannesburg.

Interview

What inspired you to shoot this story for the #FutureofCities campaign?

Johannesburg is one of my favourite cities—I feel instantly at home every time I visit.

It’s also a place that intrigues me because South Africa is an incredibly complex society—there are so many ethnicities, sub-cultures, economic disparities and worldviews, set against the backdrop of the legacy of apartheid. Within this broader context, inner-city Johannesburg is a patchwork of the most incredible contrasts, all within the space of a few minutes’ walk from each other, and in many ways it’s a microcosm of the socio-economic challenges the nation faces. I was drawn to explore this, and along the way I found George Khosi and his boxing club.

It would be hard not to like George, and I respected his humble I’ll-do-what-I-can approach to rehabilitating his corner of the inner-city in his own way. I was also struck by the notion of positive transformation and the hope of a safer, more peaceful society deriving from the violence of the boxing ring.

How difficult was it gaining access to Hillbrow and it's residents? Were they welcoming?

Johannesburg in general is a fairly easygoing place, and I was certainly made welcome around the boxing club, and in many other places I shot in the city. However, at the same time, Hillbrow itself is not necessarily a place you just go strolling around in, particularly if you’re poking into dark corners.

I was lucky enough to find some rather companionable inside knowledge of the area in the form of Papi Mofokeng, who I met while he was working out in the gym at the boxing club, and he helped me find my way around the neighbourhood.

In your opinion, what would be a solution to Hillbrow’s social problems.

I’d say one of the obvious things that needs to change if Hillbrow is to have a real chance of renewal, is that it needs to get rid of the drugs. Hopefully this can be done in a sustainable way, rather than just pushing the trade out to other places.